French Market Baskets, a Sweet Obsession

A few from my prized collection.

"I will have find a way and I will have you.

Like a butterfly. A wild butterfly.

I will collect you and capture you.

You are an obsession." 

- Animotion

Leave it to the French to find a way to render the ubiquitous plastic shopping bag beautiful…

I first discovered French Market bags in the early 1980s. My mother took my sister and I to live on the French Riviera for a summer (I was 12 years old). And for two amazing life altering weeks we lived on a yacht, operated by a husband & wife team. He was the captain and she ran everything else (including him ;-} Every morning we woke in a different port: Elba, Corsica, Cannes, Saint-Tropez…And every morning, before the sun had finished rising, the captain's wife would grab two or three large leather handled woven baskets and head to the outdoor markets to do the days shopping and she always invited me to tag along. The filled baskets were so pretty! Baguettes, colorful fruits, packages of meat and seafood wrapped in wax paper tied with twine, and flowers bunched into a cacophony of brilliant colors.

Photo: Quel Objet

It wasn't until years later, when I was an adult, that I began to use French Market baskets for any and everything I could conceive of. Beneath my bathroom sink they hold my towels, I use them exclusively for my small market and farmer's market shopping, I use a small one as my Spring/Summer purse, there's one on the backseat floor of my car that holds my wraps and sweaters and I have a gigantic one for my clothes hamper/laundry basket.

"Baskets of Beauty," Pininterest 

French Market baskets take the mundane, the everyday, the practical and renders them beautiful. They encourage you to find the lovely in the the smallest things, in the most expected places. They are a tiny piece of Paris. They are the sweetest obsession.

Vivre! Rire! Aimer!

Temple

Debut of my newest French Market bag:
France, circa 1940s. Love!